A blog about reading, buying, and selling books

August 23, 2012

Every year when we release the details of the BookFinder.com Report I am contacted by journalists who want to know “Why are people looking for <insert book title here>?” The story differs by journalist and from year to year but essentially it boils down to the fact that it’s often tough to figure out why a book, which has seemingly been ignored for years, is suddenly so sought after.

With some titles it’s very easy to spot that they were cited in newly popular book/TV show/movie or were recommended by some form of celebrity (see my previous post about John Yudkin’s book Pure, White and Deadly). I am usually able to explain these stories pretty quickly, but the books which seem to cause the greatest puzzlement are the ones which have no sexy back story, they have just been recommended again and again on online message boards for hobbyists as great books to help someone do something. Books like The Modern Gunsmith by James Virgil Howe and the Collector’s Guide to Colt .45 Service Pistols by W. Clawson have been out of print for several years but continue to be a better resource for a niche group of enthusiasts than any new books that are being published.

August 21, 2012

Every year around this time the BookFinder.com team puts our heads together, crunches the numbers and cranks out the BookFinder.com Report; a snapshot of the nation's search trends for out-of-print books. After 10 years of researching the most sought after out-of-print books in America, we’ve learned a few things:

Sex still sells: 20 years after it was first published, Madonna’s Sex has been the most sought after out-of-print book on BookFinder.com for the past ten years.

Nora Roberts has very little influence on her fans: Despite Nora Roberts pleading with her fans to avoid Promise Me Tomorrow (a book she herself has described as mediocre), the book remains painfully expensive and highly sought after.

Stephen King knows this pain all too well, he decided to take his novel Rage, which is about a school shooting, out-of-print some time ago and he just can't seem to shake the demand.

Publishers should re-print more Alice Starmore books: Starmore is a rock-star of the knitting world; known for creating some of the world’s most intricate patterns and having written a number of books. Her book Aran Knitting appeared on every BookFinder.com Report from 2003-2010 until it was re-printed in 2011, only to be replaced by Tudor Roses (#60 in 2011 and #13 in 2012). Starmore also has several other out-of-print books including In The Hebrides (1995) and Stillwater (1996).

Many of the books we see on the BookFinder.com report persist on the list for years. Sometimes they were simply limited-run books that remain popular and demand always outstripped supply. Sometimes a popular author decides they want a certain chapter of their writing career to stay firmly in their rearview mirror (see Roberts, Nora). However, even after 10 years, there are still out-of-print books coming back out of the woodwork. Here are a couple of this year’s surprises:

Kyle Onstott’s Mandingo has featured on several past reports. However, this year the author appeared on the 2012 Report three times: Mandingo, DRUM, and The Black Sun; more than any other author.

Big League Sales-closing Techniques by Les Dane is considered by many to be a salesman’s bible, even though it’s been out-of-print since 1971. Word-of-mouth recommendations on internet bulletin boards and review sites have pushed the price of this out-of-print guide through the roof.

Pure, White and Deadly; the Problem of Sugar by John Yudkin was first published in 1972 and outlines research showing that refined sweeteners are closely associated with heart disease and type-two diabetes. The book was all but forgotten, despite being highly topical, until it was featured in Robert Lustig’s lecture “Sugar: The Bigger Truth” which attained YouTube viral success. Because of this, Yudkin’s book was re-printed in the UK but remains out-of-print for Americans.

July 23, 2012

The town of McAllen Texas was recently repurposed an abandoned Walmart building into the towns new 124,000sq library. The new facility is fantastic and completely state of the art; it even won the International Interior Design Association "2012 Library Interior Design Award."

May 29, 2012

In 1993 Douglas Adams, the world-renowned author of The Hitchhikers Guide of the Galaxy, recorded a short piece of audio for his US publisher of the time – Bob Stein of Voyager Expanded Books. Who would know how prophetic his words would sound nearly twenty years later, and how accurate his sense of the evolution of the book was.

In this short recording, Douglas Adams charts the evolution of the book from the ‘hardware problems’ of writing on rocks, to scrolls, to the bound book and finally the silicon chip. The animation to go along with it was created as part of the International Douglas Adams Animation Competition.

February 23, 2012

John Locke, a Columbia architecture grad, has set up a little conceptual experiment which he is calling the Department of Urban Betterment whose chief duty is to covert old pay phone boxes into tiny libraries.

Apparently he's set up two booths so far and had limited success. Apparently the first booth had all its books lifted, and then the shelves stolen within a few days. The second booth faired a bit better with pedestrians both taking and leaving books for while, but eventually it suffered the same fate as the first. Locke plans to continue his experiments but in future booths he wants to add some simple instructions to help show pedestrians the intended use.

January 17, 2012

Reading the blogs and newsletters of the book trade can be a bit depressing at times. Not a week goes by without someone bemoaning the death of the industry and the absolute futility of it all. It is no secret that a very large number of booksellers, especially of the rare and collectible ilk, are on the older end of the baby boom; and that many (but not all) seem to think that somewhere along the line everything went terribly wrong in raising the next generation.

To this I have two comments. First, doesn't that sounds oh so similar to what the parents of the boomers themselves may have said around the time of the Summer of Love? Second, I think the rare and collectible book trade will be just fine. For full disclosure I'm 30 years old and am the son of a baby boomer myself, so feel free to take my opinion with as many grains of salt as you see fit.

Rare books are expensive, even scarce books take a certain amount of patience to find and acquire. Rome was not built in a day, and neither was a quality book collection. Young adults and youth today care just as much about the written word and this website could even be the lynchpin of the argument. BookFinder.com was created in 1997 by a young 19-year-old college student named Anirvan because he was trying to complete his Doonesbury collection. Just because he didn't pick up a copy of the AB Bookman didn't make him any less of a collector.

This is why I am so happy to see latest series from The Fine Books Blog has where they are interviewing young folks in the book industry. Here you can read an interview with 22-year-old Ashley Loga who has embarked on a career in the rare book trade after attending the Colorado Antiquarian Book Seminar. Her view on the future of the rare book trade pretty much matches mine.

Being only 22, I am perhaps one of the youngest ones currently in the trade. Personally, I am tired of this defeatist attitude. I frequently come across people bemoaning the death of the business on the list-serves. This frustrates me greatly. Having a defeatist attitude only hinders the business and does not help it grow at all. Everyone says that people my age do not collect but this is untrue. I know quite a few people under the age of 30 who collect books and take pride in their collections. I think this view partially comes from a disconnect with the older age group and the younger age group. And partially from the fact that people my age do not have the funds to buy books on the higher end of prices. Book fair advertisements need to not only target the older crowd through newspaper advertisements but also find new ways to target people in their 20s and 30s. The customers' desires are merely shifting: the business is not dying.

January 11, 2012

The First Sale Doctrine is an everyday part of life for used booksellers. If you are not familiar with the term it is essentially a limitation in the copyright act that allows the purchaser of copyrighted good to transfer (sell, lend, giveaway) said good without gaining permission from the copyright holder. This limitation was recognized in 1908 after the case of Bobbs-Merrill Co. v. Straus, in which the publisher Bobbs-Merrill attempted to limit the price that the Macey's Dept. Store could sell their publications for.

This ruling has been, mostly, sufficient for regulating physical goods, however since the proliferation of digital media artists, producers, and consumers have been unsure how to proceed. Can I lend someone my mp3 collection? Can I borrow a digital book from a library? Should a digital books have a lifespan?

I was reading a post on the Brave New World blog which got me thinking about this topic again. If publishers want consumers to value digital books in the same way they value physical books they will need to solve this right of first sale, because until an eBook can be re-sold or in some way traded after initial use they will always be perceived like a permanent rental and something you don't actually own.

In the Brave New World article they bring up an interesting service that I actually didn't know existed called ReDigi, who are currently being sued by at least one major record label.

Founded only last year ReDigi is different again and operates under the “first sale doctrine” legal concept, that allows users who buy a copyrighted item like a book or CD the right to sell it or give it away. ReDigi operates a ‘used music store’ where users upload unwanted songs and buy others at a discount. ReDigi claim that they can verify individual MP3 files were legally purchased and not ripped or downloaded from a file-sharing network. Interestingly the sellers must also install a ReDigi program on their computer that removes any copies of a song from the seller’s computer.

If publishers could get together and agree on a service like this which would allow the right of first sale to exist on digital files it would go a long way towards not only adopting digital media but literally "buying" in. This is, of course, assuming you do not already prefer physical books, are not a collector of books and said books are not first editions, signed copies, leather bound, etc. In those instances this discussion is moot.

What do you think about digital books? Would a legal re-selling service make you more likely to buy e-books?

October 18, 2011

I just found a very interesting interview with bookbinder Michael Greer. While some folks are quick to suggest that high quality bookbinding is a dying art Greer feels that this doesn't have to be the case. He sees the expansion of print-on-demand publishing as the perfect partner for his luxury craft.

In the US, hand bookbinding as a trade has been nearly dead for many years. A few of us quixotic dreamers hang on. Still, the revolution in the last decade in on-demand publishing could create a space for us. Twenty years ago, self-publishers paid a hefty sum to print maybe 250 copies of their family history. They gave away ten and the rest went into the attic. For about the same amount of money, I can print and bind ten full leather volumes and create others on demand. The difficulty is letting people know that this kind of thing exists. When I do fairs, people often approach my table full of books with a mystified smile and say, “I didn’t know anybody did this stuff anymore.” If bookbinders can get the word out, we might be able to carve out a place for our services in the growing world of digital publishing.

I think this is a fantastic coupling of old and new technologies. Imagine your own family history album, complete with photos, bound beautifully in leather and preserved for your grandchildren.

October 06, 2011

The two time Pulitzer Prize winning author Norman Mailer will be knocked off the BookFidner.com Report next year now that fine press publisher Taschen has paired the text from his biography Marilyn with photographs of the bombshell by Bert Stern. The publishing house, who is famous for fantastically designed and exorbitantly priced art books such as the Muhammad Ali tribute G.O.A.T., will publish their version of the model's life later this year. You may recognize Mailer's biography "Marilyn" from its many appearances on the BookFinder.com Report, the book was first published in 1974 and was last published in the US in 1987.